


singing the same old song (same old song)

by Psythe



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe - Homestuck Stabdads, Biphobia, Casual Violence Mention, F/M, Homestuck Polyswap 2017, Homophobia, Humanstuck, M/M, Midnight Crew - Freeform, Multi, Past Abuse, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Sexual Content (mentioned), Slurs, Smoking, casual transphobia, retired gay mobsters, slick got arrested because he and snowman hateboned so loud there were noise complaints, the midnight crew live in kansas because the feds will never look for them there, they all love one another and kind of hate one another
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-12-01 03:12:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11477415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Psythe/pseuds/Psythe
Summary: Years ago, the Midnight Crew were the terror of the Eastern Seaboard. It wasn't an easy life, being English's archenemies, with all the other gangs on their asses half the time and the Feds the other half, but Droog wouldn't have traded it for anything in the god damn world.Then they got old, and they had kids relying on them.Nowadays things are pretty quiet, most of the time. English has been dead for years, the Felt cut down in the last gang war, all but the ones who were civilized enough to make a peace with. Crime made them rich enough to live out their days, and they've squirreled themselves and their money and their kids away in Middle America where the Feds will never find them. Not that easy, of course. A life of crime and violence doesn't really prepare you for raising kids, or for how exactly to deal with people who don't think you deserve to exist when you can't hit back without drawing attention to yourselves.But all things considered, it's a pretty good life.





	singing the same old song (same old song)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GlassesBlu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlassesBlu/gifts).



> Well, I have absolutely no idea whether this is what the prompter had in mind, but, well, here it is. This is so far outside of what I usually write - I never write the Midnight Crew (though I’ve always wanted to) and I never, ever write humanstuck, but if it had to be anything, it would be stabdads. I feel like this is a lot more stabdads than polyswap, and I hope that’s okay, but I can’t actually bring myself to apologize for writing stabdads. Hope you enjoy!

Your kid is asking if you can see the morgue.

Crowbar tries to be patient with her, bless the poor idiot. He's been seeing her at least once a week and he still doesn't understand two bits about her. He's trying to tell her that the cops are not going to let a thirteen-year-old girl into the morgue, where there are all kinds of hazardous chemicals. She tells him she knows what all of those chemicals do anyway, probably better than the dumb coroner. He tells her there might be crucial evidence in there that they can't have anyone tampering with. She tells him that there hasn't been a murder in this town in six years - she knows, because she looked it up - and anyway she would never disturb a body, that would be wrong, and also disrespectful. He tells her that regardless, they aren't going to let a little kid, especially not your kid, into a secure section of the Sheriff's Department headquarters.

She looks at him like he's the dumbest man in the world, which he is sometimes, even you gotta admit, and says why should it matter if they _let_ her in? She'll just break a window.

You smirk for a moment before coming to your man's rescue.

Kid, you say to her from the driver’s seat, you realize it’s not gonna be like on your TV shows, right? This ain’t no fancy big-city morgue. They ain’t gonna have some big computer system with everyone in the country’s fingerprints on it, or expensive microscopes, with some old coroner with a diploma worth fifty g’s who hands out little bites of folk wisdom. This is Kansas, you tell her, not L.A. There’s gonna be two slabs, a big freezer, half a dozen cruddy old jars of formaldehyde, and a coroner who’s only workin’ here because he couldn’t get hired in Wichita. You know what people are like who can’t get a job in _Wichita_ , you ask her? No, she says. They’re schmucks, you say. You gonna go break into the police station for the chance to look at a rusty old slab and meet a schmuck? No, she says. Good, you say, and that’s that.  
  
Crowbar looks absolutely flummoxed. He still doesn’t get that your girl thinks her own way, and only her own way. You’ve figured her out. He hasn’t. ‘sallright. He’ll get it. He _better_ get it, anyway, if he’s gonna be your man.

He’s giving you a look. Like, a Look. You say you’ll tell him later. You got business to take care of, and you’re almost to the station. Business is a good word for it, because you’re retired and all, but some days it feels like keeping Slick out of trouble is a full-time job.

As you get out of the Lincoln the kid asks you why her Uncle Slick is always getting arrested. Crowbar tells her it’s because he’s an ignoramus. The kid says she thought it was ‘cause he’s a gangster. You give her a sharp look. That’s crap, you say. Of _course_ he’s a gangster, you say, but he ain’t ever gotten arrested for being a gangster, and he’s not about to start now that he’s not a gangster anymore. You say you won’t tolerate talk like that from someone who lives under your roof. The kid says she’s sorry. She’s a good kid.

Anyway, you say as you walk up to the station, your Uncle Slick _is_ an ignoramus, but that’s not why he keeps getting arrested. He keeps getting arrested because of that nutball girlfriend of his. You brace yourself as you speak this truth. And of course, right on cue, Crowbar gets mad. The kid is lookin’ at you with wide eyes. She’s always diggin’ for dirt on Snowman. Or, more specifically, dirt on Snowman’s little girl’s old lady. Crowbar is making a stink about how this ain’t Snowman’s fault. We ain’t got time to talk about this right now, you say. He throws his hands in the air and says he’ll wait with the car. The kid knows she’s not gonna get any dirt on Snowman out of _him_ , that’s for sure, so she follows you inside.

The sheriff’s waitin’ for you. He looks a lot of things, and happy ain’t one of ‘em. He’s got three deputies with him. You tell him you’re here to bail out your slaphead friend.

He says he’s not sure that’s going to happen. Why not, you say. You’ve got the cash. You know how much the bail is. You can handle it. No problem. He says he’s not sure why a repeat offender like this deserves bail. Frankly, he says, he’s not sure why a guy like this deserves to get three squares and a roof on the county’s dime.

You ask him to clarify what, precisely, he means by that.  
  
He says he thinks you know.  
  
You say you’re sure he does think that, but you’d still appreciate it if he said it for you in plain English.

He says a guy like this, whose only contribution to the county is the erosion of family values, doesn’t do anything to earn taxpayer-funded services. You roll your eyes inside your head, wondering how long it took him to come up with that line. You tell him that be that as it may you don’t remember seeing anything about family in the charter, the state constitution, or any local laws or ordinances. (You haven’t actually read any of those things, but Snowman’s younger kid has, about ten times, and she takes literally any opportunity to talk the ears off your head about them, so you feel reasonably confident in your assertion.) You also tell him that wasn’t much plainer English. It’s possible, you say, that the aforementioned taxpayers oughta kick in a little more to the county schools, if this is the grasp of the lingua franca its graduates have going for them. He and his mooks get that look that you see pretty often in your life, where they know they’ve just been insulted but they aren’t smart enough to know exactly how offended they oughtta be. So you keep at it while they’re off-balance, and ask them to explain, again, why they won’t be taking your money in accordance with Slick’s legal rights.

Because he’s a faggot, one of the deputies says.

There’s a moment of silence, what they call a ‘beat’ in the theatre biz, and then you say, well, you’re at at least a smidge appreciative that the actual sheriff had at least enough decorum to not want to come out and say it himself. Foisting it off on one of his goons is pretty good practice. He maybe doesn’t want to be in the same room with him when he says it, though, you tell him, by way of advice. Spoils the effect a little. And also, you say, you’re not a confrontational sort of fella. You find violence very distasteful. If used at all, it should be a last resort, and really in the final analysis if you have to hurt someone, you consider the day to be a loss, or at least something you need to improve on. But the fact of the matter, you let them know, is that if he ever lets your kid hear him or his people using language like that again, you’re gonna have to pull his fuckin’ brain out his ears.

Immediately he and all of his mooks put their hands on their belts. He asks if you just threatened a police officer. You tell him of course not. You just explained a pretty basic cause-and-effect principle. It’s like a law of physics, really. The kid’s eyes are wide as saucers.

Look, you say. This is all totally unnecessary. You’ve got the cash, you’ll post bail for your friend, you’ll get him out of their hair, he’ll make sure they don’t have to deal with him anymore. The sheriff’s eyes narrow in a calculating, predatory sort of fashion, and it occurs to you that telling people who don’t like you and don’t seem terribly predisposed to the idea of you having basic rights and dignities that you have a lot of cash on you right now may not have been the best call. Amateur move, you tell yourself. Real rookie mistake.

You hear a cackle from out front. You’d know that cackle anywhere. That cackle means that the cackler’s old lady is in the vicinity.

You’re really not a Snowman fan. You have it on good authority that she’s got plenty of good qualities, but they don’t do nothing for you. You bat for the other team. But still. Sometimes she shows up at just the right time.

She takes a big pull on her cigarette in its fancy holder before she asks everyone what’s going on here. It feels like the words are coming out with the smoke. Her voice is like cleaning your ears out with velvet. Crowbar’s staring at her with stars in his eyes. Your kid looks fascinated. Her kids look excited. You know that look. It’s exactly the same look you saw on the faces of everyone who bet on Ali right before he bent Frazier over his knee and tied a knot in him.

You tell her the good sheriff isn’t letting you post bail for Slick. She asks why. She uses a whole lungful of smoke on that one word. The ‘w’ is its own syllable. One of the deputies tells her there’s no smoking allowed in the station. She tells him to come take the smoke away from her, then. Nobody takes the smoke away from her. The sheriff tries to say what he said to you, about repeat offenders and disturbing the peace and a waste of resources, but he keeps tying knots in his tongue. You wait for him to make just the right amount of jackass of himself before you clear your throat in an uptown sort of way and say, actually, it’s because he’s a faggot. Those were your words, you say, right, officer, you indicate to the particularly boorish deputy.

Snowman takes a _really_ long drag on her smoke. Then she inhales a big old mouthful of good air, like a plane taking on fuel or a gunner loading up on ammo, her bosom swelling up in a way you have on good authority is appealing, and then she _cuts loose_. It shakes the dust out of the rafters. It shakes the foundations. You suspect they hear it in Topeka. Hell, you suspect they hear it in Timbuktu. She tells them they’re a bunch of prize-winning pigs, getting the blue ribbon at every fair in the state for being imbeciles. She tells them to shut their Goddamned mouths if they don’t know what they’re talking about. But, she supposes, that might be hard for them to determine, considering as how she doubts any of them can read, or indeed know what a book even is or what it might be for. If Spades Slick is a queer, she says, then she must be a man, because last night all that noise he was making was a byproduct of the two of them making wild, passionate love so hard that they knocked over the bottle of whiskey and cracked the bedframe. She asks if they want to check under her hood to see if she’s a man. No, she asks? Didn’t think so. She tells them to check his neck for hickeys and then compare them to her dental records. They politely decline. Thought so, she says. She asks if the prosecutor’d like her to testify in court that she was bouncing on Slick’s horse hitcher all night. They don’t have a response to that. You sympathize, frankly. You’re not sure what you’d do in their place. You’re grinning and you don’t know when it happened.

She tells them that if there’s nothing else, they can stick the guy with the noise complaint fine he actually earned and then get his ass out of here, unless this stopped being a civilized place when she was sleeping. Then she just turns on her heel and walks out. Her kids follow her, giggling like maniacs.

You head on up to the sheriff and start casually counting bills out of your wallet. This should be the right amount, you say, handing him a sheaf of Jacksons. I put a little bonus in there for ya, you say. Interested, the sheriff flips through the cash, expecting a bribe, no doubt, but his brow furrows in confusion when all he finds is a little card with a name on it, followed by the owner of the name’s extensive list of legal credentials, and the address of his offices. He’s a personal friend, you say. Good guy. Very reliable. You tell him to let you know if you ever need to give him a call.

They get Slick out of the cell. He looks alright, by which you mean that he is covered in cuts and bruises, but you judge that pretty much all of them were inflicted by Snowman and thus not really cause for concern. They hand him back his things; immediately he checks his hat, and has to be restrained bodily by you and Crowbar when he discovers that his scotty dogs are missing. We’ll get you more, you goddam lummox, you mutter into his ear as you help him get his fake arm back on, and you shove his glass eye into his hand and haul him off to the car. You don’t want to see their morgue, kid, Crowbar says to your girl as you troop on outside. Their morgue’s a dumbass morgue for fuckin’ saps, and they probably think their slabs are too good for queers. You snort and let them get a loudly bellyaching Slick situated in the back seat while you make your way over to Snowman’s green Mazda.

Snowman is standing statuesquely next to it, smoking. The woman really knows how to smoke, you have to admit. You can appreciate a good smoker, even if all she smokes are those awful French cigarettes. She doesn’t look at you as you walk up. Hey, you say. She looks over her shoulder at you by way of response. You stand there, a little bit flatfooted. Snowman always flatfoots you. Fills your man’s eyes with fairy dust, just leaves you feeling off-balance. You feel like you should be able to figure her out better, you’re both folks of impeccable taste and tremendous class, after all. But it never quite happens. You always feel like you’ve already screwed up when you start talking to her. You hate screwing things up. You have no fucking clue what goes on inside her head.

Thanks, you say. She shrugs. You say you know Slick heard all of it and he probably appreciates it. She snorts with derision and says he’s never appreciated anything in his life. You tell her that’s not true. You tell her that more than anyone on God’s green Earth, Slick appreciates a good fight.

She quirks her sculpted lips, considering this. You say that a man’s gotta love something to appreciate it. Do you think he loves me? Snowman asks, rounding on you almost threateningly. Nah, you say. Slick wasn’t made to love. But he loves fighting her.

She thinks about this for a bit. What about Karkat, she says. Does he love Karkat?

After a long, long moment, you say you don’t know, and that if she ever asks him, to tell you what he says.

She’s quiet for a while, and there’s a weird sort of silence, that even though you can hear Slick ranting behind you and Snowman’s kids squabbling in the back seat of the Mazda, is still silence, and then she gives you a single solitary nod. She really is beautiful. Impossibly so. The most gorgeous woman in the world really can’t do it for you, but as an appreciator of fine things, you know Snowman is beautiful, in the sort of way that makes you think that if there’s a Heaven, you wouldn’t mind sitting down for a chat with God after it’s all over about how he could make something like her. You’re glad you’re old and tired. It’s nice to be able to look at a beautiful woman and just think, it’s nice that someone who looks like that exists, instead of feeling like she should be getting your motor revving and maybe the fact that she don’t means it’s broken. It's nice to be too worn-out to care anymore.

Then she shrugs and the moment is over and she looks like everything around her is offensive to her tastes again. It shouldn’t have worked anyway, she says. If they’d get it in their tiny little heads that someone might swing both ways they could have shut her down in a second.

Yeah, well, you say. If the world was perfect, none of us woulda gotten rich.

She snorts and opens the driver’s side door. We’re going to the diner, you tell her. Hearts is bringing the kids. They’d be real happy if she was there. She nods, carelessly, like it doesn’t matter, but she’ll come anyway. Maybe it doesn’t, to her. You don’t know. You still don’t really understand her at all.

Slick is hurling insults, toothless ones like blank rounds, at Crowbar’s back as you come back to the car and Snowman drives off down the hill away from the station. Crowbar weathers the barrage with a patience you admire and could never quite manage, which is why Slick ran the crew and not you. The kid is watching through the back window, quiet and restrained in a way that she only is when Snowman’s blue-eyed little girl is around. As they fade into the distance she visibly relaxes. Hearts thinks there’s something rotten there, between them, and it’s gonna make the floor fall out from under you if you don’t take a look at it. You’re not so sure. Everyone’s got enemies. Some people just hate one another, no two ways about it, nothing to be done for it. You don’t see why kids should be any different. But Hearts is the best with the kids, so maybe he’s onto something. You tell Crowbar to drive and the kid to get in the front seat. She takes off like a rocket, excited, while you climb in next to Slick. Crowbar reaches over and buckles her seatbelt. A little thing like a smile happens in your chest. You put it away for later because now is not the time for smiles. Now is devoted to your stupid son of a bitch best friend.

You smack him around a little and then snap your fingers in front of his face and tell him to look at you, idiot. You ask him how many more times this is gonna have to happen. He tells you he’ll pay you back later. You tell him you ain’t talking about that. You tell him of course he’ll pay you back later, that ain’t the problem. The problem is he can’t keep drawing attention to himself like this. It’s gonna be bad for him, and what’s bad for him is bad for everyone. What the fuck does anyone care, he says. The rest of you’d just cut him loose if it came to that, he says. You punch him in the face.

He reels back across the car and whacks his head on the back seat window. You stare at him, simmering. Don’t you ever, you say, very quietly, say that to me again.

The kid is peeking at you over the back of the front seat. Aradia, you say, and she disappears back into the front. No, no, you say. She reappears, just eyes and nose. You were listening, right, you say. She says yes. You say, you and your friends are real tight, huh? You and Sollux and Terezi and Tavros? She says yes. You say would you go to bat for them? She says yes. You say would you ever run out on them if you were in a bad situation? She says no. You say would you ever sell them out to the cops? She says no. You say would you cut them loose if it got tough? If it would make things easier for you? She says no way.

You glare at Slick. My kid knows the score, you say, apparently better than you. You ask him if he forgot. He mutters no. You ask him if that’s what he’s teaching his kid, that his friends will all bail on him when the road gets too rough, and that he should do the same? They do, he says. That’s what people are like. Are you gonna walk out on him after all this time, you ask him.

He doesn’t answer. You ask him again. He says no. And if you’re not, you tell him, is Hearts gonna? Is Clubs? If anyone was gonna dump him, it’d be you. Crowbar is watching like a hawk in the rear-view mirror. Taking notes on how to handle Slick. He’s always taking notes. Managing chuckleheads is what he does, and you don’t care what he says, your chuckleheads are more of a handful than his ever were.

It’s Snowman’s fault, he finally says. Crowbar grimaces. Yeah, he says from the front seat, but at least she didn’t get caught. It was his house, Slick yells, what was he supposed to do? Slick doesn’t like Crowbar acting like he’s smarter than him. He really doesn’t like anything about Crowbar. Crowbar says okay, so dump her. Yeah, Slick snaps back, you’d love that, wouldn’t you, you pussy, you could have her high heels all to yourself, get more quality time kissin’ ‘em. You tell them both to shut up, and tell Crowbar to pull over at the corner store coming up. Slick’s not gonna dump her, you say - believe you, you’ve tried - so something else has to happen. Get a goddamn cabin outside of town or something, so these prudes who don’t know their dicks from their pool cues aren’t hauling you in at all hours of the night for disturbing the peace. He sits there, grumpily digesting this idea, until you pull him out of the car and into the store. After a minute, he puts his hand over yours.

The guy at the counter’s a good fella, and he has a thing with the guy who runs the laundromat. Clubs found out in your second month here. You know his score and he knows yours. He nods as you come in. You bundle Slick into the washroom and pat his back patiently while he washes his face off and shaves in the sink (you have a razor and some shaving cream in your coat, because you are Prepared) and dabs alcohol on his cuts and bruises. How much of that is Snowman and how much was the cops, you ask him. He grunts and says most of it is Snowman but the shiner and the chipped tooth were that one shitbag cop with the dirty mouth. You frown and make a mental note.

He’s gotta get a job, you say to him. He starts. The fuck are you talking about, he says, he’s set for life after the English job, you all are. You say yeah, but he’s gotta get a job. Or a hobby. Start a garden, or trick out a car, or collect stamps, or build fuckin’ ships in bottles for all you care. He’s gotta keep himself outta trouble.

He growls. We could fuckin’ run this town, he says. You know, you say. These cops are fuckin’ teddy bears dressed up as cops, he says, and the people are soft and they don’t know shit about shit. You know, you say. It would be so fucking easy, he says. We could own every inch of it in two fuckin’ weeks. You know, you say. God, he says, he hates all of ‘em, he hates ‘em so fuckin’ much, they’re like a bunch of little dumbass fish swimmin’ on the bottom of the sea, starin’ down and thinkin’ they’re hot shit, just ‘cause they never look up and see how much bigger and nastier the rest of the world is, the rest of the world could step on them without even fuckin’ noticin’ and they’d just be dead in a second. You know, you say. You keep patting his back.

You think, you ask him after a moment, that you ain’t never thought about this? He pauses. Or Hearts, you say, or Clubs, or Crowbar? He snarls a little. Or Snowman, you say, but then you’re pretty sure Snowman was like that back when you were still in the life, so. That gets a little snort out of him. Then he takes a second for what you actually said to get through his thick-ass noggin.

You hate them, too? he asks, looking over at you.

Of course you do, you say. You hate them so fuckin’ much some days you feel like you want to shit knives.

He kisses you, then. His chin is damp and baby-smooth (Slick always could do miracles with a razor). He smells like bad modern shaving cream with an underlayer of beer. He’s sloppy and he half misses your mouth, but he’s urgent and honest, and you squeeze his shoulder affirmingly.

He asks, as he pulls away, if you can come over later. You think for a moment and then say yeah. No problem. He nods. You were gonna foist the kid off on Clubs and have a night in with your man, but you can push it back. Slick’s had a bad day.

He should go be a clerk, you say. Work for a lawyer. He can get through more paperwork in an hour than most people can get through in a day. He grumbles, but you stare at him for a moment, and he says he’ll think about it. Best you’re gonna get for now.

You grab him some more scotty dogs on the way out. He stops you, and orders some Swedish fish, too.  


*      *      *  


The kids pile out of Hearts’s car like goddam clowns. Aradia and Terezi run over to Sollux, competing for the gold medal for Most Unsettling Smile. You catch the little Look Vriska sends after her sister, that ugly curled lip she makes whenever Terezi pays attention to anyone but her. Only there for a second, but you catch it. Nobody else does, you don’t think. (Well, your kid might not catch it this time, but she knows it was there.) Karkat is staring at Snowman and pretending he’s not staring at Snowman.  Hearts’s Country Squire is not a small vehicle, but he still has to hunch over to fit in the driver’s seat, and removing himself from the car is never the easiest of endeavors. Slick storms over, growling about what an idiot Hearts is, and shoves his head down so he can extricate himself. You stand next to Crowbar who stands next to Snowman in front of the diner, all three of you smoking, watching these shenanigans disdainfully. Clubs scrambles out of the passenger side door and opens the trunk so he can let Tavros’s ramp down. The kid rolls on out, waving and making that dopey smile. It is not worth the trouble it would start with Hearts to let your kid know that her friend is a schmuck, but _boy, oh boy_ , if you opened an encyclopedia to the word ‘schmuck’, there’d probably be a picture of this kid there in it. You keep hoping Aradia will get wise and dump the sad sack, but thus far it ain’t happening. Karkat is kind of a loser, too. He’s alright, but he tries too hard. Terezi and Sollux and Vriska are a whole other thing. Vriska reminds you of Slick more than anything. They’re gonna start their own crew one day, and by the time they’re the age you all were in the good old days they’re probably gonna be running the country. Maybe you’ll live to read about it in the paper.

Hearts lifts Clubs up on one shoulder and reaches out his other arm for one of the kids. Terezi pushes Sollux forward as a sacrifice, where he is hoisted up unceremoniously despite loud, spittle-inflected protests. He grabs hold of his tinted glasses to stop them flying off. You make your way into the diner.

You called ahead, of course, and a big table in the smoking section has been prepared for you. (You have to go to a town this small to find a place that even _has_ a smoking section these days. Country’s going to the dogs, you swear.) You instruct the waitress that you will require five children’s menus, not six. Your daughter does not eat chicken nuggets and grilled cheese. Sollux says, no, it’s okay, six kid’s menus, just give hers to his dad. Clubs nods enthusiastically. You contemplate stabbing Clubs in the throat in the middle of this diner.

Crowbar sits next to Snowman. You asked him to so you can sit next to Slick. He gave you a bit of a Look but you promised you’d make it up to him, and anyway you know he’s not ever gonna complain about sitting next to Snowman. Aradia sandwiches herself between Crowbar and Tavros and splits her attention between talking to him about some goofy thing about fairies and asking Snowman what the dead bodies of the people she’s killed were like. Vriska is complaining to anyone who’ll listen that there’s some new gangster film in the theater that they won’t let her and Terezi in to see on account of them being too young. Terezi is agreeing wholeheartedly so that she can plan an overthrow of the cruel government order that doesn’t let kids in to see movies with lots of guns and blood. (You don’t disagree.) Sollux ends up sitting at an angle that makes it hard for him to be subtle about how he’s staring at your girl like a love-struck little mook. You may have to have a talk with him.

You retrieve several creamers for yourself before Clubs can steal them all and dump them down his gullet. You take your coffee black, of course, but you push them across to Crowbar. He likes his sweet.

Hearts herds the kids into a seating arrangement that’s agreeable to everyone and then thumps himself down in between you and Tavros. Never far from his kid, that big guy. Seems like a little much. But, your kid isn’t in a wheelchair, you guess. Thank Christ. Aradia would run out of air and suffocate in a wheelchair. So what was the score, Hearts mutters. Big guy is better at being quiet than folks peg him for. You know, you say. Him and Snowman, being too loud while they’re making it again. Johns used it as an excuse. The usual. Hearts makes a grunting kinda sound that has, historically, been a preface to at least a gallon of blood hitting the floor. Oughta do something about it, he says. Yeah, you tell him. You know. You’re thinkin’ about it already. You start to ask him if he still knows Roscoe, but he says not now. Now we’re havin’ lunch with the kiddos. You puff disquietedly on your smoke. Hearts is going native.

Slick orders his steak ‘so bloody he wants it to moo when he forks it’, with piles of pepper on his eggs. Karkat gets a hamburger and shares an *enormous* plate of french fries with the rest of the kids. Clubs and Sollux just order about four different appetizer plates, passing them back and forth as each of them tests out different hideous combinations of catsup, mustard, and barbecue sauce. You order yourself a reserved plate of lox and onions and some buttered english muffins, and a rack of ribs for Aradia, with the provision that she is to make responsible and judicious use of her napkin and that she is not permitted to smear the sauce all over her face and then try to convince the waitress it is blood. Hearts pontificates loudly about how everyone should eat healthier, indicating his and Tavros’s cobb salads and remarking that he needs to take care of his _heart_. He guffaws at this and slaps you on the back. You sip your coffee and idly contemplate murder as most of the kids and Clubs laugh. You can be assured, at least, that your daughter is laughing at him, not with him. Vriska shovels poppers and a triple decker sandwich into her mouth like a philistine and Terezi spends the first half of the meal drawing weird designs on her steak sandwich with every condiment at the table, then dumps way too much salt on it and devours it in several huge bites. Snowman just orders more coffee, and eventually switches to tea brewed from something she brings with her in her coat pocket. You have never once seen Snowman eat. You are not convinced she needs food to sustain herself. Crowbar orders chicken parmigiana and spaghetti, like a proper gangster. You appreciate his choice of vittles.

You don’t say much, reserving your attention for Aradia’s table manners and keeping an eye on Slick. He looks mostly back to normal, dripping blood and meat juice all over the place like a barbarian, growling at everyone as they give updates on what’s going on in their lives, brushing off questions about why he was in the cooler. He demands details on this gangster movie Snowman’s girls are so bullish on. Terezi promises guns, sex, and witty one-liners. Apparently the guy from Grease is in it. Slick immediately declares to Karkat that they’re going to see it. The kid looks a little taken aback, but pleased. You still can’t figure Slick and him out. It’s the one piece of the puzzle you don’t have.

Everyone else makes sense to you. Sollux’s dad was an idiot, practically an invalid, and Clubs just straight up stole him off a sill one day like a fresh-baked pie, when the poor asshole just left him there crying. Clubs has this frankly kinda scary ability to compartmentalize, he can be the best powdermonkey on the planet with this disarming drunken-master brand of cunning, either so stupid he’s a genius or so brilliant he’s a dumbass one day and this relaxed dope who loves baking cakes and collecting antiques the next. It should not have surprised anyone that he could take care of a little kid at the same time he was turning warehouses into craters. Tavros lived in the neighborhood you ran, and his dad died in a crazy fucking accident, damnedest thing you’ve ever seen - and the absolute salt of the fuckin’ Earth, never gave anyone no trouble, wasn’t anyone who didn’t like him - except all the folks what hated him, of course, because that mug was queerer than Bowie. Slick _still_ thinks someone whacked him, but you know better. You turned the place over yourself, and it was just the dumbest goddam accident of all time. Kind of made you believe in God, in the sense that only a higher power who was an absolute shithead could’ve caused something like that. Hearts felt bad, so he took in his kid.

Vriska, you weaseled out of Crowbar eventually, came out of this absolute basket case. A real screwed-up old piece of work. And when you say old, you mean she probably wasn’t even forty, but she looked like she had one foot in the grave. Bags under her eyes you could carry your bread and milk home from the store in. Skin hanging off her bones like laundry off a line. Had a real problem. Had the kid scared shitless, had her always going out to do odd jobs or chores and bring her back money so she could buy more smack. One day she told her to go start doing jobs for the Felt. Snowman found out about it. Next day the old bird turned up dead, and Vriska was following Snowman around. Neither of you have ever figured out where Terezi actually came from, but you imagine the story was pretty similar there. And Aradia …

… Aradia, well, there was one other woman in the world who was as scary as Snowman. She worked for the Felt, too. She appeared in your room one day, like someone pulled her out of a hat, with a baby in her arms, and asked you in in bad English if you wanted to fuck up the Felt boss’s plans real bad. You said of course. She shoved the little girl at you, and told you if anything happened to her she’d eat your eyeballs off her hair sticks like kebabs. You believed her. There is being a tough guy who ain’t afraid of no one, and there is crossing Death. Stupid mugs do the latter, and you ain’t never been a stupid mug. Damara Megido was Hell’s chauffeur, everyone knew that. A bruno might not have been scared of English, but they were all scared shitless of her.

She’s dead now. You don’t know how. You don’t know what she was talking about or what she messed up by giving you the kid. You think about it a lot.

Maybe Slick has a story like that, too. You don’t know. You know for a fact that he’d take a bullet for that kid, but that’s no proof of love. Men’ll swallow lead for a boss they hate out of fear or duty or honor. You meant what you said to Snowman. You don’t think Slick has it in him to love. You think Slick came out hard and bad, that he’s got fighting and killing baked into his bones, that he was born with a gun in his hand and a knife in his teeth. Slick and Snowman, you can wrap your noodle around that. But Slick with a kid? Slick taking him to the pictures and inviting all his little friends along, like he’s doing now? That you can’t manage. That you got no room for in your understanding of the world.

It bothers you, so you stop watching Slick and watch Crowbar instead. You watch him eat. He’s a mick, not a greaser, but he eats spaghetti like he was born in goddam Sicily. He told you that Doc Scratch taught him how to deal with all the different gangs, the Chinamen and the Italians and the Slavs. You know this well yourself. You can’t eat dinner with a mafioso boss and be slurping up spaghetti like an asshole. Crowbar’s technique is immaculate, pressing the fork against the outer part of the dish and turning it clockwise, winding the noodles tightly around, making sure to get them nicely tangled up between the teeth, not too much at once, then transfer neatly to the mouth. No mess. Nice and neat. You like a man who eats neat. His hands are real precise. You like that too. You tell Aradia to take note of how her Uncle Crowbar eats. Nobody, man or woman, has any excuse not to eat like a civilized person. Slick snarls at you. Boxcars laughs, that big rip-roaring boom in his chest. Crowbar makes a tight little smile that you find very attractive and starts adjusting Aradia’s napkin where it’s tucked into her shirt. You catch Hearts grinning at you and turn away, huffing.

Clubs of all people ends up saving your bacon when the waitress comes by to clean up. She loads up on plates such that she’s probably going to need three trips to clear the table, and Clubs speaks up. She can take way more than that, he says. She looks flabbergasted and then offended. Even your crew looks a little put off. You take a long, exasperated drag of your smoke. Clubs, you start to say. No, no, he says. She’s got so much arm space she’s not using, and she’s not even using her head. She gapes at him. This is a frequent response to Clubs, just in general. You do this job yourself, she says, then, if you think it’s so easy. He did, he exclaims. Look, he says, he’ll just show her. You start massaging your forehead. Don’t make a fuckin’ idiot of yourself, Slick says. Well, he adds, more of a fuckin’ idiot than usual. But as ever, when Clubs is truly determined to be an idiot, no force on this Earth can stop him.

He proceeds to slot two plates in on his arms, wedged between his shoulders and the bottom of the pile of three he’s got in each hand. Then he stacks three more on his head, with a glass or two balanced on top of each stack, and scampers over to the kitchen where he hands them all to the dumbfounded dishwasher, not dropping a single piece. He looks brightly up at the waitress. See, he says, and he’s got such short arms, so he can only take it so far, but with her long arms, man, she could be taking four to six more plates. Everyone is staring, except Sollux, who looks smug as a cat. What, he lisps out, did you guys not know my dad could carry thirteen plates at a time? He can do five when the plates are loaded up, he brags.

You see, Clubs is saying as you put two Jacksons on the table and excuse yourself, he once took a nap in the back of a truck, but he had to move some packages to make room for himself to have a cozy little sleep, but when he woke up he found out that it was a delivery truck for a Mafia restaurant, and the Don had been just about to have his favorite meal! So he had to work off the cost of the food, and that Don didn’t eat no fifty-cent meatballs, take it from him, and they worked him right down to the bone in that Italian place, so he had to learn on the job…

You take a leak and then make your way out, Clubs’ latest bullshit story providing ample cover. You take a step outside into the parking lot, tired of company suddenly. Big get-togethers aren’t your thing, certainly not for fun. No conversation worth having gets done in a group larger than three, and three’s pushing it.

You finish your cigarette, light another one. The door opens behind you. Couldn’t take it any more, Crowbar says. He just will not shut his gob. You know, you say. None of that shit is true, right, he asks. You say damned if you know, he used to disappear all the time and then come back with these cock-and-bull stories. He says he got that bull penis cane of his in Spain as a thank-you gift from a matador, you tell him. Crowbar gapes at you. Is _that_ true, he asks, vaguely despairing. You got no clue, you say, but you know it’s a real bull penis cane.

There’s very loud quiet for a moment while Crowbar digests this.

Why do you put up with him, Crowbar finally asks. You say who. He says you know who he damn well means. You say where have we heard that before. He turns red and says he means Slick, goddamnit - why do you put up with Slick. You say because the other day Sollux told someone at school he had two dads. (Crazy kid, he just loves the number two.) Next day, Clubs saw another dad tell his kid not to hang out with him. He mentioned that to Slick, and the guy turned up two days later with both his legs folded into paperclips. That’s why, you say, with an unmistakable tone of finality.

Oh, Crowbar says.

What’s your problem, you ask him, finally. There’s another long moment of quiet.

Are we good? He finally asks. Are you into this? Shit, he says, you keep blowing him off. You two were supposed to have a nice time tonight, and now you’re going over to do Slick? God, he says, do you even _like_ him?

You almost laugh at him. Like you, you say. Jesus Christ, you say, what the fuck would I do without you? Fuckin’ hell, Crowbar, you say, lookin’ at him don’t make you feel _tired_ . Does he have any goddam clue how much that means? Slick needs a full-time babysitter. Clubs is as much of a kid as his kid, Hearts is going native on you, and you know he’s sweet on Snowman and all but you can’t count on her for anything. He’s the only fuckin’ guy you know who knowin’ isn’t _work_ . Do you _like_ him, fuckin’ hell, you’d _suffocate_ without him.

He stares at you, and he swallows, real hard.

You’re sorry, you say. You can get together later this week. You’ll sear up the good steaks and break out the good brandy and find somethin’ good to listen to and send Aradia off with Hearts and his weenie kid and the two of you can just sit down and take a breather.

He looks taken aback. Look, no, he says, it’s alright. Let him take Aradia while you’re at Slick’s. They can go out for ice cream. Does she even like ice cream, he asks.

Now it’s you who swallows. Yeah, she does, you say, but you gotta get it with those little gummy worms in it so she can stick them all through the cone and pretend they’re maggots.

What you gotta understand about her, you say, is that she sees the world one way and no one else’s. She doesn’t know how to turn it off. She can only be her, and she either can’t or won’t make herself someone else to get along better with other folks. You been trying to teach her how, because it’s gonna bite her one of these days, but it don’t take. Might be she won’t ever learn, you think aloud. Might be she’ll just make the world change instead.

You realize you didn’t mean to say all that, but Crowbar is just looking at you, fascinated, taking it all in. So she likes gross things, he says. You say yeah. Can’t get enough of ‘em. And ask her to explain herself. She doesn’t mind. Loves it, actually. He says yeah, okay. He can do that.

You stand there for a minute, lost for words.

Look, you finally say. He doesn’t have to wait up for you. You’re retired and all but you still got a lotta shit to do. You got a kid to raise and a best friend who needs taking care of more than the kid. This isn’t gonna stop, you say, and if he wants to go off after Snowman, look, you’ll still be here.

He starts. You don’t mind? he asks, looking surprisingly fragile.

Yeah, well, you say, he puts up with Slick, least you can do is be alright with him and Snowman.

He looks like he lets out a breath he’s been holding for hours or days. Shit, he says. You mean it?  
  
You say yeah.

He says, well, he’s been making plans and stuff, he’s hoping he can get her attention. You say that’s a tall order, he knows that, right. He says yeah, he knows. She’s a classy lady, he says, and she ought to have high standards.

Well, you say. Good luck.

You stand there for a while, wishing very badly that you weren’t in public right now, so you could kiss him or at least hold his hand.

The kids come out into the parking lot behind you, making a lot of noise. The carrying on over this all-important gangster flick seems to have reached a crescendo. Snowman seems to be considering whose face she’s gonna have to stick her cigarette holder in to make sure her girls get to see their picture. Crowbar asks if you’ll excuse him a sec. You say hey. He pauses.

You _dazzle_ that dame, you tell him.

He puts a little starch in his suspenders and strolls on up to the girls, doing his best to look nonchalant, which of course means that he does not look nonchalant at all. You watch, intrigued, as he informs Vriska and Terezi that he knows a guy he can get to fire up the projector for them one day while the theater’s closed. No fuss no muss, nobody has to know. The girls squeal in excitement and look up at their old lady. Snowman regards Crowbar coolly, and then asks if she has to do anything. Just drop ‘em off, he says.

She nods, finally, somehow not looking all that approving. The kids scurry off, already making plans. Crowbar is left there, standing in front of the lady, looking like a man who ain’t sure if his boss thinks he fucked up or not, or a knight who thinks the king might be about to chop off his head. You can imagine the sweat starting to bead on his forehead. The world really wasn’t ready for Snowman, and she wasn’t ready for the world. Wrong dame, wrong time. Men love women, sure, but no matter how tough the cookie, if she don’t give the guy what he wants, he’ll lose his temper sooner or later, and then it all goes south. You’ve seen it a thousand times. But not Snowman. No guy loses his temper with Snowman. If they do, next thing that happens is they lose an arm. A woman who can do this to an old gangster like Crowbar, even all these years later, who can turn a crew-chief who was the only thing standing between the English gang and anarchy into a quivering fruitbowl who’ll move heaven and earth just to get her to look his way? You asked him once, years back, who the hell she was, where she came from, what the hell kind of place could make a dame like that. He told you she used to be royalty, somewhere across the Atlantic, but everything went bust and she ended up here, working for English.

If she’d been born in Aradia’s generation, she would’ve owned the world.

From his coat pocket Crowbar produces two little slips of paper - two tickets. They aren’t tickets to a gangster film. You wouldn’t swear by it, but you’re pretty sure you see whips printed on the slips. And spike heels. He holds ‘em up for her approval.

Snowman doesn’t move fast, but her movement is still sudden, as she grabs Crowbar by the dome and presses her lips to his. This is not some little coffee-and-doughnut kiss. This is a French kiss, a real dirty kiss, like she means it. You turn away as a chorus of ‘ewww’s’ go up from the kids (and Slick). The kids say goodbye. Boxcars gives you a big one-armed hug and a very brief kiss on the side of the head. Big palooka. You don’t complain, though.

As Slick gets into your Lincoln you tell Aradia she’s staying with Clubs and Sollux tonight. You and Uncle Slick have to take care of some business. She nods, pleased, and then asks, innocently, if she has a mom now on top of having two dads. You tell her _hell_ no.  
  
Good, she says. She didn’t want to share a mom with Vriska.  
  
You smile, just a little. Atta girl, you say.

**Author's Note:**

> (car trivia: slick drives a black 1963 chevrolet stingray because he drives like george carlin. clubs owns a 1979 volkswagon bug, but does not have a driver’s license because no sane department of motor vehicles would ever give him one. droog drives a black 1964 lincoln continental because he is a class act. hearts boxcars drives a 1967 ford country squire because he has to have room for all the kids. snowman drives a fancy green 1986 mazda rx. and crowbar has a 1951 buick riviera. i researched this, so you get to know it too. i also researched brands of shaving cream and was taken to a Shaving Community forum thread full of people who used the phase “the Lore and Mythology of Shaving” without any irony. i did not do any more shaving cream research.
> 
> also, other mysterious skills clubs has picked up during unexplained absences: 
> 
> -bullfighting  
> -appraisal of fine leather goods  
> -juggling  
> -making aperitifs out of rubbing alcohol and absolutely anything)  
> -haiku, but only about the functioning of obscure municipal departments)
> 
> Writing this fic was a very impactful experience - I left it until the last second like a jackass and I would never, ever have written something like this normally (wouldn’t have written intermission stuff, humanstuck, or m/m) but I’m incredibly glad i did! Thanks to Dia for help with some of the backstories and 
> 
> Thanks to everyone in the Together Tuesday Homestuck channel for their support and presence on the writing stream. Also, thanks to @ivyfairy on tumblr for my favorite stabdads picture (http://ivyfairy.tumblr.com/post/22629997364) which was highly inspirational, and @rennerei on tumblr for this picture (http://rennerei.tumblr.com/post/8357701199), which almost single-handedly defined Snowman and the Scourge girls’ presence in this fic, and this one (http://rennerei.tumblr.com/post/47656191381), which is definitely what Crowbar looks like in this (maybe plus a decade or two) and also just for being really great! (love that Matchsticks face).
> 
> And a huge, huge, huge thank-you to @kurifurinkan, without whom I probably would have just procrastinated right up to the deadline.


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